Hanging Fliers On Doors or Mailing?

I was wanting to know if anyone has tried mass weekly mailings or hanging fliers on doors of potential customers. I have read that on average you will receive 1-2% business from the fliers you mail or hang. Mailing is a lot more expensive. Has anyone tried this and if so how were the results? If you had good results, what did you do to capture the customer's attention so the flier did not go straight to the trash? Thanks for the feedback.

mass Mailing is good and bad, I did it through a coupon booklet my first year and it got me my customer base, but you can get a wide spread of customers all over town which then you can spend a lot of time traveling and not much mowing. You answered yourself with the 1-2% response rate for flyers or mass mailings. It has worked out for me that if you do a good job you can then pickup the neighbors and referrals, I think targeting certain neighborhoods is a better approach.

As for catching the customers attention, either offer them a service they normally wouldn't do (ie. dethatching, aerating,) or offer a discount, but you can get the lower end clients with a discount.

i did a "mass mailing". 10, 000 homes in a great area. got 3 phone calls, landed two of the three. in my opinion not worth it. i put out fliers. about 2000 . got 5 phone calls, i got the impression that because of the fliers people didnt take me too seriously, thought id be wotrking for peanuts, landed 0 jobs. it seems now the only way to get good clients is newspaper adds or word of mouth. believe it or not i got some of my best clients by wearing my jacket with business name on the back, everywhere i go.